


warum ist das licht gegeben?

by r1ker



Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5392490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>all great empires have humble beginnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	warum ist das licht gegeben?

**Author's Note:**

> basically this show's sucked me into hell and this is what came of it
> 
> the title is from one of the pieces that played in 2.4 i think

Floyd thinks Otto’s bad news from the second she lays eyes on him. That sort of impression, so quick and so to the point, is like nothing she’s ever made before. He’s charming, sure, quick to crack jokes to the crowd of people surrounding them but focusing all his smiles on her. She reciprocates, says he’s warmer than the weather outside. In fact he’s on par with the rapid cooling of South Dakota fall, but that’s all she’s got for him right now.

 

They date for six months, marry the following spring. The wedding’s a quick affair, only six people in attendance (her parents had refused to acknowledge it, hating with all their bodies the courtship and subsequent marriage of two eighteen-year-old kids, while his were more than willing to arrange the nuptials, venue, hell, even the food).

 

While everyone cleans up following the vows and reception, she stands at the altar, still in her long sleeved gown. Otto’s busy with a few of his friends that had served as groomsmen in the ceremony. He looks at her from time to time, inviting her over silently, but still she stands offhand, picking at a fraying strand on the hem of her sleeve.

 

That night he wants to know what she’s thinking. It’s a bizarre question coming from him, so businesslike and so structured. At first, she doesn’t know how to respond.

 

“Something on your mind today?” he asks while standing at the small sink of what is to be their first home together. It’s a subdued little place, two bedrooms and just the one half bath. This arrangement will have to do until they’re settled and out for jobs.

 

“Just thought it was so different, that’s all,” is what she manages while sitting at her own vanity, brushing the stiff hold of hairspray from her hair and removing pins from the back of her head. She shakes her head. “No, it’s just… we’re married, Otto.”

 

“I’d have hoped so,” he wisecracks, “or me standin’ up there for twenty minutes in that monkey suit was for naught, yes?” Floyd wishes she could help the smile that threatens to split her face. Otto walks to her, before turning off the light, and presses his chest to the slope of her shoulders beneath her nightgown.

 

That night they consummate the marriage, the part she was probably most afraid of. It’s a quick affair and later she’d never remember it outside of any context that it was the night Ellron was conceived.

 

He arrives nine months and three days after that night. Otto’s not there of course, off tending to what he can only tell her is “important business.” Fortunately a nurse walks Floyd through the whole thing, tells her what to do to get Ellron out safely, and seventeen hours after it begins, it ends. She’s tired down to the bone and for whatever reason, so is the newborn baby in her arms. Ellron looks to be Otto’s twin, crease between his brows just like his father’s. Maybe this means they’re due to have the same destinies, providing businessmen and all. She won’t know it for years, thankfully, and there’ll be more in her life to come.

 

Two more, in following years, promise to come but don’t deliver, literally. She miscarries one just three short months into it and it’s almost five years later before she and Otto have the courage to try again. This time it’s the same end result, albeit much later in the pregnancy does she lose the boy she and Otto had named Smith. He’s buried alongside the oak in their backyard without much fanfare. After that having children, the prospect of giving Ellron a little brother or sister, continue on the Gerhardt family name, threatens to break her spirit.

 

But then Dodd happens. He happens like a firestorm, showing up a month before the doctor says it was to be his time, and all in the course of three hours. Floyd nearly has him in the hallway of their home with only Ellron there for support. Her eight-year-old stands awkwardly aside while Floyd struggles to make it to the phone to call for help. She manages, and Otto’s there this time. And they have their second boy.

 

Dodd and Ellron are partners in crime from the get-go. Being eight years apart worried Floyd every once and a while that they wouldn’t form the connection that closer in age siblings would make. She was undoubtedly wrong. From the second they crossed the threshold of their home with their new son, Ellron’s almost more hands-on-deck than Otto is. He wants to help with his new brother, bringing Floyd what she needs when she needs it. Otto even gets a little help in keeping up the house while Floyd’s busy with what’s maybe her most needy child she’ll ever have.

 

For the first few years following his birth, Dodd is unashamedly a mama’s boy. He’s at her hip even as she washes dishes, tidies the house, and gets Ellron ready for school. As his first year of school threatens to cause them to part, he outright (and loudly) refuses to go. Floyd somehow gets him to leave her arms with the promise that she’ll be back sooner.

 

Dodd is four, Ellron twelve, when Bear arrives. At first, Bear’s not his name. He goes by “the baby” for the first few weeks of his life. Floyd and Otto can’t, for the life of them, come up with a name for their third son. Many nights are spent in bed mulling aloud what male relative they should name their boy after in tribute. Even a few days are spent calling him Cord before Floyd decides that’s just ridiculous; if nature has a name for her son, it’ll bring it forth, if you had to ask her. But one day, with Dodd at her side as always, he makes a remark that soon becomes the name of his little brother.

 

Floyd is feeding the baby while trying to keep an eye on Dodd, who’s curiously sitting at her side. Like Ellron, who’s out playing with the neighborhood boys, Dodd’s got an interest in babies too. He makes sure Floyd’s got what she needs, keeps the blanket covering the baby’s bare legs.

 

“He eats like a bear,” Dodd mumbles, watching the baby kick out of the blanket Dodd’s arranged ever so precariously around him. Floyd looks down at her middle boy with a smile. Never one for a set of boring words strung together, she reckons. “Looks like one, too. He’s got more hair than me.”

 

“Well, maybe that’s what we ought to call him, _mein lieben_ ,” she says. She takes time in touching every part of her newborn that’s not covered by a gown or blanket. He’s by far her biggest baby, the biggest one she’ll ever have – she can vaguely remember the nurse calling out his weight at his birth as pushing ten pounds – and maybe he really is the bear of her children. “His name is Bear.”

 

And so it is with the Gerhardts for a few more years, three boys named eclectically and their parents by their side. Ellron grows into a man, taller than Dodd and Bear have ever seen even of their dad and uncles, joins the army to satisfy a need that Floyd will never understand, and dies at the enemy’s hands.

 

Dodd, needless to say, is the one most devastated.

 

Eleven years was simply not long enough to him, and in a fit brought on shortly after the army officials appear at their doorstep with the awful news, he says to his mother, “It wasn’t his time.” She couldn’t agree more. Bear, in his young age, doesn’t understand. He asks when Ellron is coming back from wherever he’s at and Floyd can’t find it in her to explain to him that their time with their beloved is up. Time is something all of them struggle with; how to beat it, how to save it, how to make so little of it seem like it’s abundant.

 

Someone else lacking in knowledge of the concept of time is Rye.

 

Rye is a pure accident. Floyd and Otto are out with friends of his one night, Bear left in the care of his babysitter of an older brother, and they’re left to their own devices in a rented-out ballroom with little inhibitions they had left on the wayside by a case of liquor. Floyd can’t help the hysterical laughter that escapes her when her doctor tells her she’s expecting her sixth child. Dodd and Bear look at her strangely, right beside their mother in the doctor’s office.

 

As a bit of a practical joke, they don’t tell Otto right away. He had been working the day of her appointment and she had no choice but to take the boys with her. Floyd will drop hints every now and then, including cleaning out a spare room in their newly acquired farmhouse for one of her “projects,” and soon she drops the ball entirely one day at dinner. Or rather, Dodd lets it go a little too soon.

 

There’s a brief lull in the conversations where the only sound is their silverware touching plates and bowls. Dodd had been fidgety all day so Floyd keeps an eye on him, even as he opens his mouth to speak.

 

“Mom’s pregnant,” Dodd blurts out. Floyd stares daggers into him and scoots a little closer to the table to hide the swell developing beneath her blouse. Bear stares owl-eyed at all three of them. In an attempt to placate the members of his family he holds out a grape to his father, whose face is rapidly reddening, in a symbol of peace. Otto takes the grape without looking at his youngest child and puts it back on his plate without another word.

 

“How long, Floyd?” Otto asks with the darkest tone she’s ever heard him take. She clears her throat what feels like a million times before opening her mouth to speak.

 

“Four months next week,” she answers, feeling small. Floyd sees Otto grit his teeth, a muscle in his jaw jumping beneath the skin. All of a sudden it comes rushing back to her; how long was she going to be able to hide this? It’d only be a matter of months before she went home with hopefully her fourth living child. “I didn’t think it would happen the way it did. I had the boys with me the day I found out because you were busy. I was so scared because I know how things like this had ended before.” She casts her eyes down at her barely-touched plate, sees Bear out of the corner of her eye reach out for her.

 

Floyd rises from the table and touches Bear on the shoulder in an attempt to get him to stand, steers Dodd by the shoulder into the living room. The three leave a bewildered Otto at the dinner table alone. Floyd’s washing dishes later that night when she feels Otto stand behind her the same way he did the night of their wedding. Again he puts one hand on her shoulder, moving it up to settle at the base of the bun her hair has been wildly slung into.

 

“Third one, hm?” he asks without any preamble. She nods and reaches behind her to pull a dishtowel from the hook on the cabinet. He stops her before she can pull it to her to dry the plate in her hand.

 

Rye, fortunately, is the direct opposite. He’s timid, shy, even from the second the doctor places him in Floyd’s arms. He is much smaller than Bear and Dodd ever were, fitting comfortably in the crook of only one of her slender arms. The doctors tell them later after she’s delivered that there’s something wrong with him making him weaker. She’ll never understand what but as he grows she takes extra care of him.

 

And because of it, Dodd grows further away. He’s resentful to the new figure taking up much of Floyd’s time, and tries his hardest to avoid any contact with the new baby. Bear is hopefully indifferent, however, and helps out much in the way Dodd once did with him.

 

The first time Floyd ever sees a real conflict between Dodd and Rye is when she’s getting ready to send the boys (well, Bear and Rye, Dodd’s yet to decide what he’s to do school-wise as a twenty-year-old as of yet, Floyd figures he’ll continue to work alongside Otto) off to yet another first day of school. Rye’s five and eager to begin kindergarten so he’s the first one up in the Gerhardt house. He gets dressed, eats breakfast, and combs his hair without any prompting from anyone and sits in the kitchen by himself to wait on his brothers.

 

Bear stumbles in first, sitting down at the kitchen table and hiding his bleary face in the fold of his arms. Tenth grade weighs a kid down a lot even before the first bell’s rung and the first book opened, one would assume. Rye watches him curiously as he rises from the table and goes for cereal after a few moments of silent reflection that may or may not have had a few light snores.

 

Dodd stomps in alongside Floyd, who looks slightly irritated at her older son. Rye would guess, with all his kindergartener wisdom, that Dodd didn’t want to get out of bed to help his mother prepare his brothers for school. He holds out a box of cereal as a gesture and gets rejected when Dodd stalks into the living room without any regard for breakfast.

 

Floyd has her back to the table, preparing Bear and Rye’s lunches, when Rye spots something he doesn’t like. He’s always watched his mother make lunch for his brothers, sandwiches usually given their tastes, and what he’s never liked is grape jelly. That’s usually all they have on hand in the house just for convenience and mostly Rye doesn’t eat it. When he sees it about to go onto his sandwich, he speaks up.

 

“Mom,” he begins, putting his spoon back into his cereal bowl. “Can I have strawberry jelly on my sandwich instead of grape?” Floyd would have to overwhelmingly agree with anyone that told her that Rye was the most polite out of all of her children, so she obliges with a smile and switches her knife over to delve into an untouched jar of strawberry jelly.

 

Dodd comes back into the kitchen shortly thereafter with Bear’s Saint Bernard nipping at his heels. He looks rather annoyed, walking past his brothers to linger in a corner of the kitchen by the pantry. The dog clambers beneath the table to rest his weighty head in Bear’s lap.

 

“Keep Anselm in your room this time, would you?” he demands of his younger brother, who is too busy with his hand hidden in the dog’s fur. Dodd moves to go for the kettle of coffee done brewing on the stove and Floyd regards him with light annoyance as she puts the finishing touches on the boys’ lunches.

 

Dodd takes note in the change of plans in the lunches, the red of the jelly different than the purple he always got and ate without complaint. “What, he didn’t want grape?”

 

“Yes,” Floyd answers without much preamble. She’s always been quick to cater to her sons if they asked nicely for it; and, since most of Dodd’s demands weren’t preceded with the nicest of tones, she sparingly gave in to him when he was Rye’s age. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Dodd’s sneer. It’s unmistakable, just about the biggest thing character-wise he inherited from his father. “It’s his first day of school, Dodd, give it a rest.”

 

“All I’m saying is he gets too much special attention,” Dodd remarks. If he could ever make a case for eldest child syndrome, someone out there would most likely take it seriously. Most of his life after acquiring two younger brothers was spent complaining about how they got tended to differently than he was.

 

Floyd had grown accustomed to it and subsequently ignored it but today it seemed to nag at her differently. This was Rye’s special day; today was to be his first day of school, and Dodd didn’t let anything go for anyone no matter how good it was supposed to be for them.

 

Dodd, first addressing his mother with complaints towards his brother, turns to the brother in question. “And you. Bear and I ate what we ate for school lunch when we went to school for the first time and we didn’t whine about it. Mom’s got a lot more to worry about than what you’re feeling like today.” Rye’s face, holding on to the lingering effects of a smile from something Bear had said to him earlier, falls. It doesn’t get any better when Dodd kneels before him condescendingly.

 

“Empires aren’t built with whiny babies like you in mind,” Dodd says with no feeling other than malice in his words. Rye frowns deeply, embarrassed tears brimming in his eyes. He changes moods quickly, claps his little brother on the shoulder roughly. Rye trembles with the motion and blinks once in surprise, and the tears that earlier threatened to fall slip down his cheeks. Dodd stands and leaves and Floyd is left to pick up the pieces.

 

Before she walks him and Bear out to the bus stop, Floyd sits on the front porch of their house still working to console a confused Rye. While Bear runs out the energy his dog has pent up in the front yard, Floyd sits in one of the rockers with Rye in her lap. He’s still small enough to do so, still underweight and shorter than most of the kids he will be attending school with will be.

 

“You have a good first day of school, alright?” she reminds him with her nose pressed into his hair. He nods and drags a hand across his wet cheeks. “Don’t listen to your older brother. Dodd is mad about a lot of things, a lot of things he’s had to see and feel in his life; when you’re his age, you’ll know all about it. But for now, you like what you like and don’t worry about what Dodd’s got to gripe about. That’s what makes you Rye, hmm?” Again Rye shakes his head in agreement but doesn’t hide the few strangled sniffles that escape him.

 

The bus stops with a series of grinding squeals at the end of the Gerhardt family home’s drive. Bear puts Anselm in his doghouse, locks the gate behind him, and waits dutifully at the end of the dirt driveway for his little brother. Rye climbs down from his mother’s lap, smooths out the sweater he picked out, and accepts another hug from Floyd before hopping down the stairs to join Bear.

 

Bear has one of his hands held out for Rye. Rye looks up at him hopefully, taking his brother’s hand tightly in his, and gets a nod in response. Bear says something to his little brother that Floyd can’t quite make out but she knows it’s good; Rye’s smile and accompanying giggle is something she wishes she could save forever.

 

She sure could use that memory now.

 

For hours she wonders how she’s to inter the body she was never returned, the one of her youngest son. She hasn’t encountered this before with any of Otto’s associates – they were fortunate (or otherwise) to have the body of the child that died unfortunately. Floyd has no idea what she’s to do. First Otto, then Rye, there’s nothing she can think of to rectify this situation.

 

In a box in the attic she finds a heap of his clothes from when he was little. In her hands the sweaters and shirts are so small that it astounds her that someone could ever be this little and have so much life like he had as a little boy. She finds the one he wore on his first day of school – a garish thing, really, he had fallen in love with it once he saw its yellow and gray stripes hanging by their lonesome on a rack at the dime store in town – and folds it into a neat square. Downstairs she has it at her side as Bear explains to her the process of the funeral.

 

When they lower Rye’s makeshift casket into the ground next to his father, the sweater lies at the center of the plywood base.


End file.
